How to use cURL to send Cookies?

Question

I read that Send cookies with curl works, but not for me.

I have a REST endpoint as:

class LoginResource(restful.Resource):
    def get(self):
        print(session)
        if 'USER_TOKEN' in session:
            return 'OK'
        return 'not authorized', 401

When I try to access as:

curl -v -b ~/Downloads/cookies.txt -c ~/Downloads/cookies.txt http://127.0.0.1:5000/
* About to connect() to 127.0.0.1 port 5000 (#0)
*   Trying 127.0.0.1...
* connected
* Connected to 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) port 5000 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.27.0
> Host: 127.0.0.1:5000
> Accept: */*
>
* HTTP 1.0, assume close after body
< HTTP/1.0 401 UNAUTHORIZED
< Content-Type: application/json
< Content-Length: 16
< Server: Werkzeug/0.8.3 Python/2.7.2
< Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 04:45:45 GMT
<
* Closing connection #0
"not authorized"%

Where my ~/Downloads/cookies.txt is:

cat ~/Downloads/cookies.txt
USER_TOKEN=in

and the server receives nothing:

127.0.0.1 - - [13/Apr/2013 21:43:52] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 401 -
127.0.0.1 - - [13/Apr/2013 21:45:30] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 401 -
<SecureCookieSession {}>
<SecureCookieSession {}>
127.0.0.1 - - [13/Apr/2013 21:45:45] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 401 -

What is that I am missing?

Solution 1

This worked for me:

curl -v --cookie "USER_TOKEN=Yes" http://127.0.0.1:5000/

I could see the value in backend using

print(request.cookies)

Solution 2

You can refer to https://curl.haxx.se/docs/http-cookies.html for a complete tutorial of how to work with cookies. You can use

curl -c /path/to/cookiefile http://yourhost/

to write to a cookie file and start engine and to use cookie you can use

curl -b /path/to/cookiefile  http://yourhost/

to read cookies from and start the cookie engine, or if it isn't a file it will pass on the given string.

Solution 3

You are using a wrong format in your cookie file. As curl documentation states, it uses an old Netscape cookie file format, which is different from the format used by web browsers. If you need to create a curl cookie file manually, this post should help you. In your example the file should contain following line

127.0.0.1   FALSE   /   FALSE   0   USER_TOKEN  in

having 7 TAB-separated fields meaning domain, tailmatch, path, secure, expires, name, value.

Solution 4

If you have made that request in your application already, and see it logged in Google Dev Tools, you can use the copy cURL command from the context menu when right-clicking on the request in the network tab. Copy -> Copy as cURL. It will contain all headers, cookies, etc..

Solution 5

curl -H @<header_file> <host>

Since curl 7.55 headers from file are supported with @<file>

echo 'Cookie: USER_TOKEN=Yes' > /tmp/cookie

curl -H @/tmp/cookie <host>

docs & commit

View more solutions

Comments

[matts1]

As long as you never, ever have a boolean for a user token as a cookie, given that they can just authenticate themselves without logging in that way.

[ryenus]

According to the man page, for option -b, --cookie, e.g. curl -b <file-or-pairs>, if the argument is a string having the '=' symbol, it's passed as is, otherwise it's treated as a filename to read cookie from.

[m3nda]

Yes, this is the cURL cookie format. These are TABS and not SPACES.

[nhed]

IMO you did not enhance on the official doc which is clear as mud - beside the overloading of the -b flag what is the essential diff between -c & -b they both start the engine and point to a cookie file?

[Madbreaks]

@nhed -c writes to the cookie file, -b reads from it. So when sending credentials for a login form you would specify -c to write the resulting cookie to a file, then you would use -b to read from and include the cookie in your next request.

[LinuxDisciple]

Or do curl -b cookiefile -c cookiefile https://yourhost/ to read and write to the same cookie store like browsers do.

[Admin]

multiple cookies can be set with semicolons --cookie "key1=val1;key2=val2;..."

[Valber]

This should be marked as the official answer, since this truly addresses the point as to why @daydreamer's setup was failing.

[Sahbi]

~ is not expanded to $HOME if it's put within quotes, in which case it will be treated as a literal tilde. ;]

[JSuar]

This solution is much easier if the cookie you need is already available via a browser. +1

[tharinduwijewardane]

For sending multiple cookies, I had to put a space after ; (I am using a mac) Eg: --cookie "key1=val1; key2=val2"